school year vs calendar year

Ok here's the question for you: Which has a bigger effect on your schedule the school year or the calendar year?

For me it's the school year. I mean from kindergarten through grad school that was the start of the year to me. It was the time of change from one grade to the next. It was the time of new friends, new routines and a new beginning. It always felt like the real New Year was just another day during the winter break. Yep it meant that I now needed to remember to write a different year when I wrote the date, but other than that, no big changes to my life.

Then well as you know I was a teacher so again the school year meant a change. Every new school year I got a new group of children to teach, encourage, mother, care about, and lets be honest a few to cringe over.

After I stopped teaching there were not many major changes to my life schedule as a set time. It was more based on the births, naps, doctors appts, bedtimes, meal times etc. These changes were more day to to not, major changes.

Now that Blake is going to school I find myself slipping back into the feeling of the big change of the school year. I am in need of finding a new groove with our schedule and routine. What can I get done while Blake is at school? What do we need to do after lunch? When will soccer practice be? Can I start going to a night Y class? Should I take the boys to the Y in the afternoon once a week so Blake gets some Y time? All those changes and decisions need to be made because it is the start of the school year.

I always like looking at this as a time of change and moving on a positive direction.

So which has a bigger effect on your life, the school year or the calendar year? Hope the beginning of the school year means a change to a more positive direction in your life too.